Transport containers, usually designated containers, are widely used for civil as well as military purposes and/or transportation of different type of goods by sea, by train, with container trucks, or by air planes etc. The containers are designed with a framework of steel and a base (floor), side walls and top of flat or profiled sheets. The containers are often provided with swing doors at the short end walls.
In military applications containers are often used for transporting different types of equipment, like weapons, clothes, tools etc, from a storehouse to e.g. a combat area where the containers are emptied when needed and left behind. In an attempt to make the most of such containers, office units have been made by cutting out openings for doors and windows in the container side walls. This solution is however not satisfactory for more than one reason. Firstly one is not able to establish a sufficient seal against war gases, secondly the container will be rendered unsuitable for its original purpose unless major repair work is undertaken subsequent to its secondary use.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,061,134 describes a container "solution" where the purpose is to provide a construction that can be used alone and in a combination with two container parts connected end to end. This is achieved by providing an end wall of the container with a band shaped tightening member 35 which surrounds the light opening of the container end wall 21. The end wall further comprises a stop member 36 with an area corresponding to the tightening member in order to reduce the pressure strain on the tightening member and to protect the latter against mechanical strain both when connected and in stand-alone condition.
In a connected condition a substantially equally formed container unit is moved towards the first container unit in such a way that the respective tightening members 35 and stop members 36 are brought in face-to-face contact with each other. The container units are held together this way by use of a locking member 42 arranged in each corner of the light opening, whereby each locking member generally consists of a bolt 43 projecting through a hole in the edge of the end wall, a locking pin 61 to lock the bolt tightly in the hole and a handle 56 to bring the bolt from a locked to an open position and vice versa.
By this construction the relatively narrow sealing/gasket 35 is established only on the supporting area of the respective container units. This embodiment in combination with the stop members 36 requires an exact positioning of the container units for the attachment procedure. In addition the combination of sealing/gasket 35 and stop member 36 will hardly offer a seal that is sufficient to establish a required elevated pressure or reduced pressure in the internal container volume. Another substantial disadvantage with the known device is that the pressure exerting members 42 are relatively long and partly extend into the opening which is established between the container units when they are connected. Such a design therefore will strongly limit the possibilities of establishing a free passage between connected containers. Further it is doubtful whether the known construction is at all suitable for connecting more than two containers.
NO A 974411 discloses a device for connecting two or more containers of the isocontainer type horizontally or vertically. This design generally comprises a band shaped elastic sealing member which surrounds an opening between the containers to be connected to each other and which is placed on a supporting surface, as well as attachment members to force the sealing member against a supporting surface and against the opening between the same. In a preferred embodiment a frame shaped supporting surface is arranged on each of the container walls to be connected to a similarly shaped second container, and the preferably seamless band shaped sealing member is stretched from a vertically oriented supporting surface on the first container over the gap between the same and to a vertically oriented supporting surface on the second container. A substantially frame shaped pressure exerting member is arranged close to the vertically oriented surface of the sealing member on each of the containers. The attachment members then ensure that the gasket in between the containers is forced against the supporting surface, thereby providing a fluid tight and gastight connection between each of the attachment members and the supporting surfaces, and thus between the first and the second container. In this way a gas and fluid tight complex of (several) containers may be achieved.
While this previously known design does enable a further utilisation of transport containers and established a gastight connection between such containers in a larger building complex, it has several disadvantages such as the attachment members needing to be retightened if the containers are mutually displaced.